Big Ten Expansion - Oregon and Washington expect to receive invites

[nate82]

College football and basketball has been a money first education fifth type of programs for about 30 years now.  You are not putting that genie back in the bottle. 

I have no problem with the players being paid as I believe they should be and always should have been paid.  They are providing a service in the form of entertainment.  If the tickets were free and there were no TV rights then sure the players shouldn't get paid then.  I think that is the only way you could go back to where players don't get paid.  I believe you would also need to shorten the season and limit travel also so the players are able to focus on school as much as they are required to focus on the sport. 

The players have been treated like employees by the universities for some time now.  It is only fair that they get paid like employees also. 

[madbad2000]

4 hours ago, CheezWizHed said:

Is the BIGX (Let's face it... we need to drop the "10") and SEC just going to become the AFC/NFC of college football?

I think the answer is probably yes.  I would honestly like to see football breakaway from the conference model.  It's something entirely different.  You could keep the smaller conferences for non-revenue sports to cut down on travel and keep the academics in line since most don't have professional avenues in sports anyways.  Football probably goes to an NFL model with a lot of eggs being broken in terms of teams left out and current BIG/SEC schools getting kicked out of the adults football table.  The question then becomes how many schools in that new league?  You could probably do 4 divisions of 12 for 48 total teams.  Everyone in the division plays the others for 11 total games.  Winners of each of the 4 division have a playoff.  You have a total of 24 games every week to sell with all of them good matchups and a lot of great matchups.  You have all media types bidding for control of the best college football in the country.  That's how you get and maintain the best media rights deal.  You still have a bunch of other possible matchups to fill bowl games for teams that didn't get to play during the divisional regular season.

[Jim French Stepstool]

8 hours ago, owbc said:

I guess I don’t see the big deal? From the kid’s perspective, they probably weren’t originally recruited by a big school but they worked hard and got better and earned themselves a ticket to a big program. 

The mid-major coaches almost always bail after a Cinderella run, why shouldn’t the players have the same opportunity? 
 

Travel is a whole different issue but I bet we’ll see the B1G teams play all of the west coast schools in a single road trip over the course of a week. The non-revenue sports can also have expanded nonconference schedules. There are plenty of ways to mitigate it, even if it sucks as a whole. They certainly have the money to pay for it now. 

I guess it's an "old school" thing with me. I'm not happy with an Eastern Illinois or UALR or whoever making the commitment to develop & shape a kids' academic, athletic & social skills then having someone vulture in afterward, without having done anything to develop him (and often w/o even knowing the kid existed when he was a HS senior) because they can use another shooting guard or whatever. I think if you choose to transfer, the original rules--sit out a year--are preferable to what's going on now.

If it were up to me, those rules would be waived if a coach leaves/gets fired/retires. Then you can leave & be eligible immediately.

[Jim French Stepstool]

And for the record, I'm OK with NIL provided it isn't abused or used as another way of cheating. Fat chance of that at some places.

[LouisEly]

The non-revenue sports are going to have to form regional conferences (or football/basketball break away into separate "conferences"). 

They have the precedent - the old WCHA worked really well.  Minnesota-Duluth, Minnesota State (Mankato), North Dakota, and Denver didn't have an issue being competitive with Wisconsin and Minnesota.

That being said... a direct flight from Madison to LA takes about the same amount of time as a bus ride from Madison to Mankato.  Less time than Duluth... or in winter weather.

[homer]

1 hour ago, LouisEly said:

The non-revenue sports are going to have to form regional conferences (or football/basketball break away into separate "conferences"). 

They have the precedent - the old WCHA worked really well.  Minnesota-Duluth, Minnesota State (Mankato), North Dakota, and Denver didn't have an issue being competitive with Wisconsin and Minnesota.

That being said... a direct flight from Madison to LA takes about the same amount of time as a bus ride from Madison to Mankato.  Less time than Duluth... or in winter weather.

UW doesn't have as big a potential travel issue as Rutgers, Penn St, Maryland, USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington might.

[Jimbo]

3 hours ago, LouisEly said:

The non-revenue sports are going to have to form regional conferences (or football/basketball break away into separate "conferences"). 

 

The WIAA already does this for high schools.  Your idea is the best way to go.

[homer]

9 hours ago, Jimbo said:

The WIAA already does this for high schools.  Your idea is the best way to go.

Article in The Athletic:

Quote

College football: Leave the nest now before you kill everybody else. One athletic director told me that West Coast schools will need to factor an extra $10 million in travel expenses into their annual budgets for non-football teams. That’s before even taking into account the physical and mental toll of added miles and time during the season, fewer chances to play in front of family and friends — a major attraction for athletes in all sports, not just non-revenue — the inability for other fans to travel long distances to watch their team and possibly a ripple effect on academics.

Actually, forget about academics. That hasn’t mattered for a while.

https://theathletic.com/4759133/2023/08/09/college-football-realignment-schultz/

[GAME05]

I can't imagine trying to pass a 400-level biology course while also traveling to a game in NY on Monday and a game in California on Thursday. Granted, I can't imagine passing biology to begin with.

[MrTPlush]

On 8/6/2023 at 8:22 AM, DuWayne Steurer said:

I'm not a pac 10/12 fan, but it's still sad as a huge fan of college football to see a conference with such a long history and tradition be undone in such a short time by the changing landscape of tv money.

it is what it is...

They did it to themselves though. They tried to get greedy and demand too much. 

They could have been eating the Big 12 up, instead the Big 12 signed the ESPN deal and turned around to wipe them off the planet.